From our conservation holiday volunteering with lynx, wolves, bears and wildcats in the Carpathian mountains of Slovakia (http://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/slovakia)

We have started our journeys to Slovakia and so it is time for our Slovakia expedition diary 2016 to start too. Our executive director Matthias Hammer is the advance party with most of the equipment. He arrived in Slovakia yesterday and is now in the Carpathians. As you can see, there is a bit of snow, but warm weather and rain is forecast for the next few days, so we may be tracking in the mud, in the valley bottom at least, rather than in the snow. We’ll keep you updated on the weather.

Expedition leader Paul Franklin and his assistant Phil Markey are starting from the UK tomorrow on a drive that will take them three days. We all meet up at our base in Švošov on Thursday, where our expedition scientists Tomáš Hulík will also join us. Yesterday Tomáš joked that because of the warm weather, the bears might be awake… 😉

We’ll be in touch from there with more information on weather, work, plans, etc.